Phantom Frames in a Winter Solstice
by The Man In The Alley
Summary: Mike picks up an unusual fare on the city streets during a blizzard.


Oh angel, oh angel,

I don't want to be buried in the storm.

Who's going to close these dying eyes?

Dig my grave with a golden spade.

Lower me down with a silver chain.

The coffin lid will screw me down.

I don't want to be buried in the storm.

Who's going to close these dying eyes?

Oh angel, oh angel.

Carl Sandburg - _The People, Yes **(55)**_

**MIKE**

The sidewalks weren't more than dirty dark-gray smudges in a blur of fierce white when I saw her. She moved like the walking dead through the dying light of dusk, slow and deliberate, one foot before the other, headed nowhere fast but headed somewhere all the same.

How she could make one building from the next in a shit-storm like this was anybody's guess, but when I rolled to a stop beside her trudging form she shook the satchel off her back and slung it across her shoulder, opened the back door of my car and ducked inside liked she'd known I was coming all along.

"You wan' I should pop the trunk, lady?"

She shook her head, snow falling from two thick curly walls of dark hair onto the brown leather seat beside her as she checked the many straps and side pockets and little black metal zippers of the satchel. I sat there, one arm resting on the shoulder of the driver's seat, watching her, waiting.

The flakes of snow she'd shook from her hair were tiny wet puddles on the seat before she turned her head towards mine and I finally saw her face.

Thin, handsome, almost plain. Skin the color of caramel and too much forehead under those curls. A nose that had been broken more times than I've had to fix this goddamned cab. There was strength in that square jaw, resolve in those thick lips and a fiery, passionate death in those dark green eyes.

I looked away. Fixed the rearview mirror, reset the meter, popped the cigarette lighter, rubbed my fingers over the tiny plastic naked woman that dangled from my keychain-

"Kennelwood Apartments," she said, softer a voice than I'd expected.

I started driving.

Quarter of a mile in, I heard her fumbling through the pockets of her denim jacket. In the rearview mirror I watched as she pulled a crumpled, half empty packet of Lucky Strikes out of her left breast pocket. She sighed with what could only be a smoker's relief, and I realized that she was shivering in the slightest of ways.

Two thin layers of clothing covering her bare skin from a frozen winter storm on the streets of Basin City and she trembled like a stiff oak in a whisper of a breeze.

"Where you comin' from?"

She stuck a cigarette between her lips. "Bus station," she said around it. She started patting her pockets again.

"That's four blocks in sub-zero weather."

"Yeah." She was tense now, patting the same pockets faster, even checking the left breast pocket she'd pulled the Lucky Strikes out of.

"That's impressive. This is the kinda weather you kill to get out of." I popped the lighter out from the dashboard and presented it to her.

"No," she said, shaking her head, almost frantic but mostly just pissed, "you don't understand, I need the lighter, _my_ lighter-"

I kept my eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel and the other over the seat, still holding the tiny plastic dashboard lighter, metal tip burning ember-orange in the dim yellow glow of the street lamps rolling by overhead. "You're not gonna find anything, the color ah frustration you're in. Have yourself a smoke and calm what nerves you can."

She stopped. Our eyes met briefly in the rearview mirror. She lit the cigarette and took a deep breath from it. She sighed again.

I plugged the lighter back in the dashboard and watched the road for a while.

The snowstorm was heavy. Cars parked on the sides of streets were piled high with the white stuff; their forms obscured under layers, making them look all alike. Snow beasts, with bones of metal and rubber legs and blood the spouted flames with a single spark.

I'd look back occasionally as my fare rummaged through her bag in silence, the cigarette sometimes stuck between her fingers, sometimes in her lips. The smell of it filled the cab.

I was going to take her through Brightmont, across the bridge and past the industrial section, past the piers and into downtown Strickland where the Kennelwood tenement was, on Oakheart Street.

That would've been better than through Old Town.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "got it!"

She brought up a gold-plated Zippo lighter from within one of the satchel's pockets. She ran it over her fingers and clasped it in her palm. Her green eyes sparkled.

She caught my bemused perplexity. "Lucky," she said, waving the Zippo.

I nodded and ran one finger over the naked form on the keychain.

A block later we came up on the bridge. Closed off.

"Well, not sure if it's your luck or mine, lady, but it's turned sour."

She frowned, edged forward. She saw the makeshift roadblock, the blinking yellow lights. "Blocked? Why would they close off the bridge?"

I chewed on that for a bit. Then, "Cops. Lenny Puccini's hittin' the streets tonight, the station's just beyond the bridge. Likely to be a crowd. I doubt this'll be closed more than the night."

"Chupeme, the whole night!" She cursed under her breath. "Is there another way to Kennelwood?"

I shrugged. "Well, sure, but that's through Old Town-"

"Old Town. There a bar near there called Kadie's?"

"Yeah, about a block off."

"Fine. Forget Kennelwood, I can bum a ride from there."

I scratched my head and squinted at her through the mirror. "You got people you know in town? Friends?" If she was talking about hitching a ride off a drunken stranger, and from Kadie's, no less, she'd have better luck of getting to the apartment alive by stripping naked and walking the miles of snow and storm from this point blindfolded.

She leaned back into the seat and took a long drag off the cigarette, looking more relaxed than I thought she could even pretend to be. "People I know? Sure. Friends…what's your name?"

We were stopped there right in front of the bridge; the engine running, snow hitting the windshield and getting swept onto the corners by the wipers and the lights from the roadblock blinking yellow into the cab. "Mike," I told her.

She stared at me through dark curls. "Mike, I've got friends at Kadie's. I've got friends in Old Town. I've got friends all over Sin City," she moved her head, and light blinked over the passenger side car seat and illuminated the top half of her face. Her eyes were blazing dark green fire, and I swore I could see her mouth in shadow; a wide, leering grin. "I've got friends who would kill for me. Friends who would take a bullet to keep me breathing. Friends who will. They just don't know it yet."

And then the light was off, and she moved back. She wasn't smiling now, just smoking. Her eyes were dark and still on me.

I put the car in reverse and doubled back. Kadie's was six city blocks from the bridge.

Like spotting a black weed in a rose garden, I'd realized what she was. I'd seen her kind. I'd seen all kinds in this city.

People _would_ die for her. And from her. It wasn't a woman that had gotten off that bus and walked four blocks through a severe storm. It wasn't a woman I was driving to Kadie's.

It was a harbinger.

A cold December had fallen hard on Sin City, and the snowstorms had been raging for a week now. But I held in the backseat of my car the first true sign that winter had come.

A dismal, violent winter.

**A/N- **I don't know when I'll get another chance to write fanfiction. I'm entering Air Force Basic Training today and I wanted to get something out. Something. So this is it.

Hopefully I can return to this as I plan to, add more character perspectives, including a number from the comics/film. Build a story and whatnot. Sin City is rife with potential fanfic goodness.

If I can, it'll be a while coming. Two months or more. Be good, kids.

_sniffle-sniff_ Be good.


End file.
